Walls have been massively nerfed with the launch of Aoe3 De, health has been reduced from 3000 to 1500 and LOS has been reduced from 4 to 1. Bastion has been moved from commerce age to fortress age, build time of bastion walls have been increased.
When we consider Aoe3 to any other RTS games of this genre, it’s the game where walls are at it’s weakest stage but not only because of those changes, it also requires no investment to deal against walls in Aoe3 which makes it even easier to counter with way too low hp. To add strategic variety to the game there should be changes that help walls to be more useful in the early stages of the game to prevent the most games ending in early ages scenario, very small amount of games go to imperial age and most games finish before industrial age at competitive level, this is because of the lack of variety options in Aoe3 DE. It takes very fast seconds to siege down a wall thus makes it pointless to build walls most of the games, players only wall to create temporary advantage in Aoe3 unlike other games because Aoe3 early game walls are underperforming.
What could be done?
Early game walls health increased from 1500 to 2500
A new wall upgrade is added that increased wall hp to 4000, costs 300 wood 300 coin to research
Bastion upgrade is moved to industrial age, increased wall hp by 2000 each age, so that walls go 6000 hp in age 4 and full bastion hp in age 5.
Walls were not overperforming, the nerfs were for the petition of having game winning condition decided without any strategic variety but timing based play, which resulted the over nerfs.
Compared to my old days in treaty games, wall HP is extremely underwhelming. It’d be a better move to make walls much stronger, but to increase their hitbox and build-box to prevent walls from being built too close to each other, removing the option to heavily layer but still retaining heavy wall power.
The last treaty game I played, I only needed a handful of Imperial Hand Mortars to remove every wall in my way and it was rather disappointing. There was no long, held-out game because the defenses just didn’t exist. It felt like treaty games had been pushed from wars of attrition that depended on your ability to be flexible and manage your army to wars of just… whoever can push the hardest.
ADD: Opinion, but I don’t think it’s actually controversial - I genuinely miss the Aztec walls with 32k+ health, and Warhuts + Noble Huts that could 1-shot weaker infantry units.
This is right, the reason of why there is always so many walls is because of the underwhelming healthpoints that forces players to make 2-3 layers of walls, also should keep in mind you need to wall your entire base early game in aoe2 and it takes 100s of resources to deal against walls in aoe4, includes the research tech as well as rams.
Layered walls were very difficult to deal with. I remember some competitions being won solely on whoever would close the gap faster. They needed nerfs. Yes, this makes treaty less of a sim city of walls, but that’s really a good thing. Walls are supposed to buy a few seconds to get your army together, not hold out when you are being completely outplayed.
Even if you buff hp now, this won’t stop people from layering more. No amount of ### ### is going to fix that.
Exactly - You are right, there were multiple reasons and i strongly agree that Walls shouldnt get any buff, doesnt matter which age. Furthermore and we can see on the game play from the thread opener walls exist as well for abusing of pathfinding. Towards this is biggest reason why walls are just annoying is not because they slow you down it is because players, especially notorious wall spammers making 3 or 4 layers of walls without pillars in a pretty low amount of ressource cost. Just this gives you so much value just for placing a 5w building and even more you gain advantage from that the game will go crazy if 75% of the map is walled. There are multiple Reasons why -
Attack Move will not longer work, actually the opposide is the case if use that your Units will randomly start attacking Buildings xD
LOS, a defensive player automatically win every artilerry war because of the better movement space, more los from the walls and its way harder to reach is culvs or arty. So its always ending in a fully walled map with endless wars between Horse Gun, Culv, Horse Gun, Culv.
In my opinion walls should be even more nerfed and have a building aura that you cant spamm endless layers of walls behind an dbehind. Also they should remove the Hotkey for making walls pillarless with the hotkey select all type, as well they should move bastion to age4 and spend a smaller upgrade for 350f,w,c in age3 where walls can go up to 4k and thats it. We have enough statical game play with FI, Arty, scaling cards. This needs to be weaken down a bit.
It’s also important to take it consideration that wall siege spreads in Aoe3, thus a sieged layer effects all neighbour layers as well which is a good disadvantage for making close layers, I think with recent x2 added to mortars, walls are even easier to deal against right now in late game. Which again, early game walls getting into balanced spot again will add the variety to Aoe3 DE which it currently misses
Every time I read strategies from players, I can’t figure out if I’m a lot lower in elo than them or if I’m super high elo and just don’t know. Horse Gun, Culv, Horse Gun, Culv… Horse Guns are useless in treaty games. Heavy cannons are somewhat useful, but when it comes down to it, the only artillery that’s actually useful are mortars, culvs, and artillery special-made to annihilate infantry, like Rabaulds. Field Guns, Horse Guns, Flying Crows… they’re too cost-inefficient to be viable, it only takes 2-3 shots from a culverin to destroy one and that’s a massive gold sink you just wasted on a weapon that likely never even got one shot off.
Again, last time I tried a treaty game, it was boring as hell because the defenses fell like paper and it just came down to who had the army that could reach the front line faster and more reliably, not down to who could manage an army and a war of attrition better.
For clearing i am a supremacy player around 1800 elo with 6k games and what about you?
Usually if we as better players asking this of for Elo we get attacked for being arrogant xD
Also i can not even see why this should be important. Also playing a game 20 years doesnt make you automatically a good player. So even if you have since 2005 30k hours it means not much in terms of being “good”
I haven’t played more than 30-40 games of treaty on the DE, and none of them ranked, but I can say that I was around level 34 on legacy, which I played for 8ish years, with 10k+ hours, easy.
I can say that treaty was a lot more fun on legacy because the absolutely wacky aspects of civs that were never meant to happen in a normal game were the norm, like Aztecs with 32k+ walls and the cow boom.
Now, treaty feels more like it’s a race to spam howitzers to tear down paper-thin defenses and throw in cavalry because almost no civ can effectively defend against a cost-efficient heavy cavalry spam backed by skirmishers.
I think walls are just busted for such a small amount of wood you get so much protection and i think walls should be either less hp or more cost. Its so easy just to put down walls and delay/buy time to win the game. Its not even funny playin against it
breeze you should precise you speak for 1v1 sup cuz there a difference between treaty and sup, and its not clear honestly cuz everyone just start speaking for their own game mod
Because walls are weakest in aoe3 from all metrics, real time strategy games require walls and base buildings to have as strategic variety, outposts are also not performing well for the cost, thus it’s generally not built early game. Otherwise the strategy goes away, it becomes a different game. Also unit train system in Aoe3 already helps a lot to early aggression
I feel like these changes can be viable, and even might be considered worth implementation. Moreover, i am convinced walls hp can be increased for further like 5-10% but the cost should be adjusted. I suggest either removing “delete pillars” feature or adding more wood cost to them. This shall make using walls more thoughtful-rewarding process in game.
Agreed, I think it would be even greater to get a bigger rework, some features are being used for too long which could recieve rework with some adjust, this also applies to pull trick that allows slow units to move at 5-6 speed.
I think the most succesful RTS is Starcraft. No walls. RTS don’t necessarily need Walls, and in Age 3, they promote a more static gameplay, which, at least in my opinion, works against the strengths of the game.
Saying that timing plays are non-strategic and walls offer more strategic variety is your opinion, but just that, man. I personally completely disagree. Timings are the result of hard practice and calculation, you need to execute them right, and timings are not autowins, you still need micro to utilise your units (with most civs) to their full potential. Putting down 500 wood worth of walls disables most lategame strategy, it then becomes a drawn out back and forth.
If every game 1v1 supremacy game is supposed to be like a treaty match, that can be your opinion, but it certainly isn’t my personal preference. I play age of empires for the tempo. The micro. The genious strategies and perfectly executed plays.
Not to watch somebody play Castle Builder Simulator.
But that is of course just my opinion.
Walls should weaker and more expensive in the early games, maybe 2k health, 4 LoS, 10 wood/section, and an increased footprint that prevents the building of buildings within 7 units of said wall.
But, later on, Bastion becomes available in Fortress, increasing the health of walls to 6k, 10 LoS, and 15 wood/section, as well as a slightly larger model, hence the earlier age larger footprint.
Add to this, the addition of a tertiary wall upgrade - available in Imperial, it would increase wall health to 12k, up the cost to 20 wood/section, and 15 LoS with a slightly larger model, that would fill up a more significant portion of the footprint the wall holds.
With the massively increased footprint, maps of walls would become impossible. Granted, this might also make building walls much more difficult, but I think some modifications to the core rules of where walls can be built would be able to get through this just fine.
agree on your suggestions. You call me conservative but I said several times the bonus vs walls shouldnt be for every civ. Europeans didnt need it (specially Portugal), neither Japan (more range and shogun). The bonus had to be reserved for siege elephants, AKs, hand mortars and maybe africans since they have limited acces to them. After industrial or imperial upgrades
Also they shouldnt attack units, that was a swede feature and the change was a downgrade for everyone else. Asian civs players know what we are talking about.
About town dance, it wasnt OP in TAD (on treaty at least) because aztecs needed wood for coyotes and AKs were harder countered by canons. You just had to wait for them to run out of resources.
Now on DE, it was nerfed, not just for walls, but in general. Also, the HP age up and War Hut card were nerfed too with no reason.
i love how then they gave Inca beefy buildings and walls. In my opinion their card for Walls should be the same than portuguese one to avoid ultra HP walls for everyone on team games like they already do with HP buildings with India.
Captured mortars are unfairly balanced. They cost more pop while they have the same stats than unupgraded mortars and are limited to 3 buildings. When they added them they were mostly perfect. If inca ones were the issue being tagged as natives then remove the tag (like they did) or just nerfed them for inca, not for everyone else.
Good luck stopping Oprichniks, Tokala, Samurai, Doppels or any cav rush in later stages, not just 10 units.